Selby crash driver faces lengthy prison sentence

A driver described by police as "a mobile catastrophe waiting to happen" today faces up to 10 years in prison after being convicted of falling asleep at the wheel of his Land Rover and causing the death of 10 people in the Selby rail crash.

Gary Hart, 37, was yesterday found guilty of 10 charges of causing death by dangerous driving by 10-2 majority verdicts at the end of a 12-day trial at Leeds crown court.

He had admitted he had not slept the night before the crash at Great Heck, North Yorkshire, and had spent five hours talking on the phone to a woman he had contacted on the internet.

Hart screwed up his eyes as the first verdict was announced and dabbed away tears. The judge, Mr Justice Mackay, will sentence Hart, from Strubby, Lincolnshire, next month after receiving medical and psychiatric reports.

"You stand in peril of going to prison for a substantial period," he said. "In fairness and justice to you before I pass sentence, I need to know as much about you as I can."

He agreed to a defence request for bail while reports are prepared and ordered Hart to surrender his passport.

He told lawyers: "The effect of these verdicts is and must be a sentence of immediate imprisonment of a substantial term and a disqualification of a longer term.

"My mind is not closed to alternatives but that is what is in effect inevitable in a case of this enormity and magnitude."

Hart left the court, climbed into a car and clung sobbing to his wife Elaine. The verdicts were heard by many relatives of crash victims and survivors. They listened in silence but many wept. Mary Dunn, whose husband Stephen was killed as he drove the coal train involved in the disaster, said: "Some people think Gary Hart is evil. I don't consider him evil. He made a bad mistake which should not go unpunished."

Detective Superintendent Peter McKay of North Yorkshire police said: "Gary Hart was a mobile catastrophe waiting to happen. He could have avoided these deaths and didn't and he alone is responsible." He had driven in a "sleep-deprived state" at excessive speed. "He could have avoided the misery that we now see."

Hart told the court that as he set off to drive 145 miles from his home to Wigan, Greater Manchester, he had been "buzzing" with excitement about the new woman in his life whom he was due to meet for the first time that evening.

The jury rejected Hart's claims that he needed little sleep, was used to staying up all night and was so excited that he could not have dozed off. They also rejected his claim that a fault had occurred on the Land Rover, causing it to swerve from the road.

Hart, a groundwork contractor, had left home towing a trailer loaded with a Renault Savannah. Just after 6am he dozed off and his Land Rover left the inside lane of the M62, crossed the hard shoulder, just missed a safety barrier and plunged 40ft down an embankment.

It came to rest on the railway line and Hart scrambled out and dialled 999 on his mobile phone. As he spoke to an operator, he saw a train smash through the front of his vehicle, which police later reconstructed from 800 pieces.

The train, the 4.45am GNER express from Newcastle to London, then collided with a coal train travelling north. The drivers of both trains were killed, as were the chef and a steward in the restaurant car. Six passengers died and more than 70 were injured.

The crash is likely to prompt the biggest motor insurance claim in insurance history.